Little White Lies

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time, for filmmaker Guillaume Canet (Tell No One) to remake Lawrence Kasdan’s 1983 The Big Chill in French. And so we have to imagine a group of vacationing thirtysomethings – François Cluzet, Marion Cotillard, Benoît Magimel, Laurent Lafitte, et al. – acting out their frustrations while listening to American pop-song oldies and getting themselves into American sitcom-style semi-humorous pickles while their friend (Jean Dujardin) lies near death in the hospital. Starts well but slides, and should have dropped at least one of the subplots. The big difference between Canet’s version and Kasdan’s: The new one does not aspire to a statement about a generation, but just a portrait of a bunch of self-centered people we’re happy to escape from. Screenplay and direction by Canet. (154 min.)
ByKelly Vance